Doctors not researchers in the top peer-reviewed papers.....

Researchers who got there because other researchers said they were good. It's circular logic.

Haven't been interested at all in the subject and have never looked into it. And anyway if you are right and they are completely fake and wrong, this would not be general evidence that papers are always as good as coin flips.

It's prima facie evidence. That's all I hoped for. I haven't actually done a SRS of journals by topic and figured out which ones are really BS. But of the subjects I do know about, almost all of the literature in "top peer reviewed" papers is garbage. This includes my own technical field of engineering/simulation.

I am leaving this conversation. If you really believe that the most-cited, accepted, recent articles etc. are as accurate as a coin flip because people have biases and because the statistics are not perfect and if nothing that I've said so far has convinced you otherwise then there is no point in continuing.

Straw man. I did not say the statistics were not "perfect". And I did not say they were "as accurate as a coin flip". In the red meat example, they are worse.

Also, not to be rude, but I do not see why you would join LessWrong if you think like that. A lot of the material covered here and a lot of the community's views are based on accepted research.

A lot of LW is analytical.

The rest is based on less accepted research. Either way, the belief that research (especially well peer-reviewed research) brings you closer to the truth than coin flips on average is really ingrained in the community.

Research is a good starting point to discover the dynamics of a certain issue. It doesn't mean my final opinion depends on it.